Month: December 2004

As it turns out, the U.S. government has pledged less money to aid those desperate folks in South Asia than we’re planning on spending on the inauguration.
What I wish:
* that we had a president I’d be happy about inaugurating.
* that I could go to South Asia and work to help make things better.
* that we’d all call off all the freaking wars and killing going on to help clean up the whole area, clean the water tables, and set up a system to warn people of disasters like this, so they can at least survive with their families & a set of clothes, if nothing else.
Some days it feels like the planet herself is trying to let us know that we’re jackasses, and we keep not listening.
But you can urge Pres. Bush to up the U.S.’ contribution.
A tired and sad,
Helen

I’m not the type to ask for prayers, ever, for anything, but Southeast Asia is a place near and dear to my heart. It’s going to take years for them to recover.
Please donate to your charity of choice (Betty & I favor Doctors Without Borders).

I know I’m not the only one excited by a Christmas gift of gender theory – not only, but not common, either. A slim volume, bound in oily paper.
But how is it – despite my excitement – that once I start to read I start to yawn? Radical performativity and challenges to authorship make me want to stretch like my cat on our bed, him in the sun through our back bedroom window, me on the D train, rays streaming in off the white chips of ice in the East River and on the sludge piles on the Brooklyn side. White light/no heat.
Despite theory, on the train I name genders. Shy momma’s boy, effete hipster, resilient Malay matriarch. Aren’t we all different gendered, even while we pass for one or the other? Does the crisis only happen when everyone sees “man” when one feels “woman,” or vice versa? Or do we just assume that everyone only sees two, like some kind of post-apocalyptic god, cleaving some to the left, some to the right? What do most people see? I try to remember back, from when I didn’t think of gender, and what comes to me is a time when I was on a different train, the Long Island Railroad, and I was about 17. An aging conductor was the first to take my monthly ticket, and he punched it M. I know I changed it later, but I also know I’d wondered if I should, or not. Would all the conductors think me male, or had the lights blinked off for a moment for one semi-blind conductor? If I had it changed, and they still read me as M, – what then? (I had it changed, thinking somehow that my combat boots and shaved head and flannel shirts would still, somehow, by some miracle, be read as F.)
No one reads me now as M, but I still know I’m only passing.

Hello all!
I could use your help.
I’ve posted a questionnaire for partners/SOs/SOFFAs of transpeople in order to help aid and direct my research for two upcoming essays and possibly/probably for the next book.
I’ve posted it in the MHB Message Boards and would love for people to post it on other message boards, Yahoo! groups, and listservs.
Thanks to all!
Helen Boyd

For the month of January, Book Television in Canada will be “sexing up” their shows, which includes an interview with a male proponent of cunnilingus, Tom Wolfe, and us!
Find out more about the show at the Book Televsion website: www.booktelevision.com/richlerink/index.cfm

Transgender advocates and activists are celebrating the release of Guidelines Regarding Gender Identity Discrimination from the New York City Commission on Human Rights this week. These guidelines interpret the Human Rights Law and are designed to educate the public about the prohibition on discrimination based on gender identity and expression that became part of New York City human rights law with the passage of Int. No. 24, the transgender rights bill signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg as Local Law 3 of 2002 in April of that year.Continue reading “Transgender Activists Celebrate Victory in New York City”

an excerpt from The New York Times review of the show Betty is currently acting in:This is perhaps Ms. Adamson’s greatest insight. Kafka’s writing is tinged with sadomasochism and voyeurism like the best pulp fiction, and this production is saturated in sex. In desire as well as law, everything is provisional, declarations are nothing but proposals, and the apparent is just as good as, if not better than, the real. This noir reading is at its most effective in a comically creepy scene when Joseph K. visits the garret of the court portraitist, Titorelli, played by a throaty, androgynous Jason C****.